What Is Your Purpose?

Welcome to the first official episode of the EmpowEAR Audiology podcast. Carrie Spangler, your passionate host, takes a deeper dive into her own personal life of living with hearing loss and how it became her purpose.  Going through the cycles of grief, Carrie summarizes the vast array of emotions and experiences (both good and bad) of the hearing journey.  Rick Warren quotes “that character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test”.  I challenge each of you to reflect back on your own life tests and see how they have challenged your own purpose!

For more information about Dr. Carrie Spangler- check out her LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-spangler/

For transcripts of this episode- visit the podcast website at: https://empowearaudiology.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

00:00:00] Welcome to episode one of empowEAR Audiology with Dr. Carrie Spangler.
[00:00:16] Thank you for joining me and my first at the show podcast for empowear audiology. Again, my name is Dr. Carrie Spangler, and I am your host and I'm a passionate audiologist with a personal hearing journey. And I hope you subscribe today. So you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes from different professionals.
[00:00:37] and individuals with personal journeys related to hearing challenges. But today I really wanted to take a deeper dive into my own personal journey of living with hearing loss as this is really the reason that I wanted to start this podcast is because of my own personal journey.
[00:01:01] I have been empowered by many individuals along my life. And I wanted to share that with you and hopefully challenge each of you along the way. But as a kickoff podcast, I hope this will inspire and motivate each and every one of you as listeners, whether you have a direct or indirect relationship to the world of hearing loss and audiology.
[00:01:27] So I'm really taking a deeper dive into my own personal life of living with hearing loss. Of course I can't cover everything. That would be a long, long podcast , but I hope that you will be able to experience my way of emotions and experiences, both good and bad, and you can use these as learning tools and motivation and whether whatever journey that you might be.Experiencing right now.
[00:02:00] So I hope you've fit into my shoes for this podcast. You learn and you gain a little insight into my own into my world and understand a little deeper of why I really am excited about empowear audiology as a podcast. So I truly believe that all of us was created, but a purpose on this earth.
[00:02:25] I believe that honestly, I was born with a hearing loss for a very good reason, and it led me to the field of audiology so that I would be able to share professional expertise intertwined with all of the personal experiences. So, this was really was not an accident. It was purposely created for me, but I have a long journey of how I came to accept my hearing loss and be okay with who I am.
[00:03:05] I love this quote from Rick Warren. He wrote the book purpose driven life in 2002. And he says that character is both developed and revealed by test and all of life is a test. So I ask all of you as listeners. What are the tests that you are faced with in your own life? I really challenge each of you to reflect back on your own life test and see how they challenge your own character as a human living on them.
[00:03:40] So to start with this podcast and my life's journey, I think the only way to start this is just where I came from. And that was my parents, Mike and Pat. And Mike and Pat, they met at Kent state university in the late sixties. They were both in education. They happily married and they both started off working as teachers and they decided to build a home.
[00:04:10] And a few years later they would decide it was time to start a family. So the first born was actually due on December 25th, Merry Christmas. And, Mike, Dad, was a dedicated wrestler and dedicated coach. So, four days before due date and December 21st, , Mike was at a big wrestling tournament and, and that particular day, their firstborn decided that it was time to enter it into the world.
[00:04:47] So I can only imagine what Pat was feeling, that frustration before cell phones were. I imagine trying to get a hold of the Mike at a school on a Saturday to say, get to the hospital. You are about to have a baby. So, December 21st, Carrie Lynn entered the world. However, not without causing anxiety.
[00:05:17] The placenta had broken away too soon. Lack of oxygen and emergency caesarean was necessary. Apgar scores were low and it was just a big scare for anyone, especially new parents. The doctors later caution my parents about the side effects of lack of oxygen, mainly mental and developmental delays. But there was really no way to tell the extent of the damage right away.
[00:05:51] And hearing loss was not one of those side effects that was mentioned to my parents. So at each pediatrician appointment questions were asked by the doctor about feeding and sleeping , and crawling and walking and speech and language development and just overall health in general. And overall, I was meeting quite a few of these important milestone, but I was definitely not meeting the speech milestone because I was doing so many of the other milestones.
[00:06:24] It was the assumption of many doctors that everything was okay. That hearing all or hearing nothing philosophy was really believed at that point in time. However, my mom had a gut feeling from the beginning that there was something quite not right with my hearing. And that gut feeling actually began in the hospital and she remembers the phone ringing.
[00:06:52] And at that time it was a corded phone with a rotary dial and it had a very loud ring and she remembers the phone ringing and me not startling. And that's where that first gut feeling about my hearing developed.  At each pediatrician visit, she would inquire and express her concern about hearing and speech development.
[00:07:21] And the doctors would do what we call as audiologist, a paper crinkle test, or the clap test. And I would turn my head. And the doctors would say, Oh, you're over protective parents. Or, your child's a late bloomer. And so as parents, when you have several different pediatric pediatrician telling you that you begin to think, Oh, maybe they're right.
[00:07:54] And of course, as a parent, you don't want anything to be wrong with your perfect child. Why would you not want to believe them? Let’s fast forward, four years.  This happy go lucky child named Carrie was developing great with fine and gross motor skills. She was always smiling. She slept extremely well.
[00:08:20] She was actually surprisingly social. However, there was one major concern. No one could quite understand what she was saying. So at that point in time, my mom had enrolled me into a story hour at the public library. And when the kids enjoyed the story time, the parents had an adult parenting education hour.
[00:08:46] During this one particular story time, a speech language pathologist was talking about speech and language milestones, and she was just going over those different mile milestones and different red flags started to go off in my mom's head.  Afterward she spoke with the speech language pathologist and the speech language pathologist said, well, if you, if you have concerns and rightfully so at the age of four, you really need to have her hearing tested.
[00:09:26] And my mom has said, well, I've taken her to the doctor and the speech pathologist luckily expanded on what a hearing test was. And my mom went home that day and searched the phone book and actually called the local health department to find out where to take me. So at my first appointment for a hearing test, I, at this point in time, I was four years old.
[00:09:53] Being able to do a conditioned play task, or I raised my hand.  I was able to understand that. And what did you, what did the audiologist find out? She found out that I had a mild sloping, profound, bilateral hearing loss in both ears. So as a child at the age of four, I do remember getting fit with my first pair of hearing aids.
[00:10:22] And I remember getting the earmolds made. And at that point in time, it was a liquid and powder mix that the audiologist would mix together and form that pink material and they squirted it into my ears. And I remember the audiologist talking to my parents and I had this pink stuff in my ears mold impression material. 
[00:10:48] And I could just remember that I was moving back and forth. And then I remember going back a few weeks later and being fitted for the first time with my hearing aids. And while going down the hallway and hearing my footsteps for the first time. So that was really as a four year old, an exciting day, for me as anything new and different and being the center of attention would be for anybody.
[00:11:15] Little did I know about the experiences that my parents had and the other side of the fence. They were so good at pretending that everything was normal and that this was just the normal part of a four year old life. And I do appreciate that because they had the highest expectation for me. But on the flip side, I am I guess, uh, kind of sad that they did not have anyone else along their parenting journey that they could talk to and really know that they weren't alone in this process.
[00:12:00] Fast forward, just a little bit. And, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, but I wanted to share a little bit of this, so that you have a background, but a few years ago, as an audiologist, now I had the opportunity to just share my personal journey and really this wasn't something that my mom and I talked about a lot, or that family talked about a lot.
[00:12:26] And so I wanted to know from my mom. What was she feeling along this parenting journey? Because I'd never really thought to ask about it. We just kind of went through life as any family kind of does every day. You know, you get through the day and we'll get busy and you just do your best to raise kids.
[00:12:52] Because I was doing this presentation, I decided that I would ask my mom to write down some of the feelings that she had. And so I thought I would use the grief cycle, which some of you might know was originally defined to explain the emotion that someone goes through when they lose a loved one.
[00:13:15] But the models also applies to a loss of a job, a divorce or other life altering events. So the cycle includes denial and anger. And bargaining and depression and acceptance. And so I'll share later on how, even though that this model actually fits a lot of what I felt growing up with hearing loss and think all of us go through different levels of emotions and own life when we go through difficult times or we lose someone or we're going through a diagnosis that we don't know about where any kind of event, but I wanted my mom to really think about these different stages and see if that model fit her journey as a parent. So back to my mom, I had written down those different key points of the Kubler-Ross model.
[00:14:18] She said, let me think about it and I will get back. She have the chance to think about it? She just started writing down everything that she felt. Honestly had about 10 pages that she wrote down about that. And it just was shows how important it is to be connected with others who are in the shoes and had the chance to share what your feelings are.
[00:14:51]. At some point, I want to have my parents on this podcast so they can share their own feelings. But I wanted to  summarize just a little bit about my mom's feelings through the parenting process so that you can get a better understanding of the importance of empowear audiology. Empowering those that we work with and that we see on a daily basis and the parents and the kids and the consumers and ourselves as professionals, we need to be empowered.
[00:15:29] So the first cycle it's denial and my mom wrote that for that denial it's part of the cycle. Felt that she ignored her gut feeling. She knew that there wasn't something right. And she allowed doctors to convince her that their perfect newborn was well. And so that was kind of that denial part of the cycle that she really felt dealing with.
[00:16:07] With the hearing and the hearing loss and the next part of the cycle is anger, the anger or the first reaction, really, when she found out, she thought to herself, you know what, we did everything right. And you want your child experience to be perfect. She thought like, Oh, all of my other friends, I have perfect first child experience. Why didn't we? And they just really, as parents felt inadequate to do with a child with a hearing loss because they didn't,  know nothing about it. So what are you supposed to do? They thought for themselves and that really manifested into anger, and that part of their cycle of that grief cycle.
[00:17:04] So the next section or the next part of that grief cycle is bargaining and she felt like she could say, “You know, we work really hard. Yeah. If we go to therapy all the time. If we put all of our effort into this, the hearing loss and the issues go along with it, will go away? So kind of like that, dear God bargaining.
[00:17:40] If we do this, will you make this all better? And then the next part of that cycle is depression. So my mom reports feeling powerless and overwhelmed and frustrated and guilty at times when I was challenged. So I'm feeling alone and not having that support. And they didn't know anybody else at that point in time who was going through this type of an experience.
[00:18:09] And then the last part of that cycle. Is accepted. And, she really talks about realizing that, Hey, hearing aids and therapy are not a quick fix. And coming to terms that every new experience, whether it's a cap or a sport or swimming would always involve some kind of unique modifications or accommodations for me.
[00:18:40] So my mom also talks about the cycles and that you don't, you can skip cycles, you can cycle through several different times and she reports and, and really shares that she cycled through these stages [00:19:00] several times throughout my life. And what I think. Is really, I'm trying to think of the word, that last part of acceptance or that the most powerful part of acceptance is that she really could accept my hearing loss when I was okay in my own skin.
[00:19:29] So, she's felt like she cycled through the stages of grief. Until I truly accepted my hearing loss, which for me, I would say I didn't truly accept my hearing loss until I decided to go into the field of audiology. I just want to say that I am thankful that God chose Mike and Pat as my own parents, because they truly loved and they supported, they encouraged, and cared for me and, and the greatest way possible. So, I just want to say that I would not be who I am today without they're continuing support. And even today I, depend on their support to get me, through different stages of my, of my own life, going through parenting and everything else that we all go through on a daily basis.
[00:20:36] But. Again, I kind of want to reflect back on that quote that Rick Warren and his book, the purpose driven life says, and he say that character is both developed and revealed by test and all of life is a test that I certainly put my parents through a challenging life test. So I'm going to kind of switch gears a little bit, and I want to share just a little bit about my own personal experiences of growing up.
[00:21:06] With hearing loss and just give you just a peek into my authentic look of my own life. I think you will see that the grief cycle, that I really did take baby steps to be. Becoming competent and to becoming an advocate and I think you will see this through different podcast. When I talk about different topics that my emotions that time might have seemed like gasoline and they were dangerous and destructive and not other times in that cycle. I carried myself with much confidence and acceptance. So I do love quotes. And so you're going to hear different quotes and different podcasts depending on what the topic is. And I love Helen Keller's quotes. And one of her quotes about character is, she said my character continues to develop through trial and suffering the soul strengthened and success achieved.
[00:22:18] I love keeping that quote at the forefront, because sometimes we have the fall and we have to fall hard in order to be, to, to go up and to be strengthened. And to know that success is ahead of us. So to give everybody a little framework about my early education years, I basically wasn't as you know, identified until age four.
[00:22:45] And by the time I got my hearing aids, everything set up and in the therapy, I was ready to start kindergarten and my school district hadn't had a lot of experience of dealing with a child with hearing loss. So. My mom signed me up for kindergarten and we decided to see, let's see how she goes, uh, how she does and at that point in time.
[00:23:17] So any of you who work in the schools and know how involved IEPs are, they can be 20, 30, 40 pages long when I was. Going to elementary school and middle school. I had a one page IEP. So at that point in time, really I was on an IEP for speech sounds. So I think I was working on every single speech sound there is to work on because no one could understand what I was saying.
[00:23:53] So that was the basic of my IEP at that point in time. So another thing that growing up through school and going to public school is that I didn't have an educational audiologist or a teacher of the deaf on my team. So. My teachers didn't really understand a lot about my hearing and my hearing loss and different accommodations that needed to happen in my classroom.
[00:24:33] And on the flip side, I didn't know a lot about my own hearing loss and how to advocate for myself. So there was a lot of times going through school that I probably got out or didn't understand something. Right. And we  didn't really look at the foundation of why that was happening. So I could remember back in fourth grade and I was tall so I was seated in the back of the room, so I wouldn't block anybody else. I'm sitting in front of me. And I remember the teacher walking around the room, while giving spelling tests. And I had the hardest time with that because I really relied on being able to see someone's face when they were talking, but I really didn't know how to express myself that way.
[00:25:52] So instead of raising my hand and asking for a repetition, I decided that I would just glance over at the kid sitting next to me to see what that spelling word was that I missed. And I wasn't cheating. I just didn't hear the word, but the kid is sitting next to me immediately raised his hand and called on the teacher and said that I was cheating.
[00:26:26] So I actually got sent down to the principal's office for cheating on a spelling test. And I just remember being devastated and, and really not knowing how to explain it, but I felt like I was the person to blame. So that was just one of those reflections of going through elementary school and not knowing enough about why I had to wear hearing aids and what my hearing challenges were in order to advocate for my own self.
[00:27:04] So, as a professional, these early self-advocacy or early challenges or barriers that I had really gave me an opportunity now as an educational audiologist to reflect down some of these difficult situations. And, I didn't realize that others didn't hear like me. I just assumed that we were all in the same boat and there are so many tools and guides out there right now to help professionals with this topic directly to help our kids directly and also to share with families. So,I think even though these were tough challenges for me and that hearing technology, wasn't that great at that point in time as it is today. All of those exceptions now give me insight to working with families and with the students every single day.
[00:28:15] So I really, what, who encourage, whether you are, consumer with hearing loss, whether are a student with hearing loss, whether you're a parent who has a child with hearing loss. So, or a professional who works with individuals with hearing loss, building self esteem and competence and knowledge advocacy is really important to do. So let's go circle back around and I'm going to fast forward through a few, more years to the middle school years. And I'm sure all of you guys can think back to middle school or junior high and have some unpleasant memories of those years, because it's just a tough time, no matter who you are. 
[00:29:10] For me, I felt like it was even more amplified due to having braces and horrible hair and wearing hearing aids and having an accent, which is my deaf speech and having trouble, especially in crowds and social gathering, keeping up with everyone. So this is probably the first time that I've felt like I entered into [00:29:53] what we call the Kubler Ross grief cycle for the first time. So, so like I said, we'd [00:30:00] come together as a group of middle school, adolescents, and you just really want to be part of the group but I always, at that point in time like I was floating around on the outside because communication and connecting was really difficult for me.
[00:30:22] So I went through this very strong period of anger and bargaining and depression during that part of my life. I wanted to bargain with the God. You know, if I do really good on my test, my hearing aid, I won't need them anymore and you know. I will be a good person for the rest of my life [00:30:50] if I don't need to wear my hearing aid anymore. It was just really difficult as [00:31:00] a middle schooler who has a disability and being the one and only. That was one of those difficult years. You didn't really want to talk to your parents about it cause you didn't want them to worry. And I didn't really have any friends I could talk to about it because they all had normal hearing and really wouldn't understand what I was going through.
[00:31:29] So it's just one of those cycles, that grief cycle that was really difficult at times. So as an educational audiologist today, I'm able to reflect back on those feelings. I realize like there's actually research and data behind what I was feeling and you know, communication and communication barriers [00:32:00] are universal among all people who have hearing challenges.
[00:32:06] And a child or a student with hearing loss is going to have difficulty interacting in a spontaneous way when in a cafeteria or a gym. And all of it was different social situations. So there was kind of these other host of secondary problems that can arise when you're feeling on the outskirts.
[00:32:37] So even though it was really difficult in that time, now that I am in the field, I feel like I can really reflect back on that difficult time and create it for good. So do you do a podcast? I can't wait to share with you about the [00:33:00] importance of peer connections and peer mentorship, because it really, as a professional, my experiences growing up and during my middle school years really was a driving force for what I am passionate about.
[00:33:19] Today let's fast forward a few more years to my high school years. I would say high school I felt a little more confident in who I was. We got through that awkward tween, early teen years. The boys are starting to get a little bit taller than the girls and my hair was a little bit better. I got my braces off, so I was feeling a little bit more confident about myself.
[00:33:49] I was part of the volleyball team. I was part of the basketball team. I had a built in network group of friends who honestly, [00:34:00] these strong friendships have continued until today. So I'm, friends with a lot of my high school friends today, which is great to look back on and be able to share all of those great memories with, but I still would say that during high school, I was not a hundred percent comfortable in my shoes as a teenager wearing hearing aids.
[00:34:24] I still, at this point in my life had never met anyone else with hearing loss or who were hearing aids. When I was a senior and getting ready to go to prom, I was still so self conscious about wearing my hearing aids and I didn't want others to see them, even though they knew I wore them. For prom, the [00:34:53] popular hairdo was called an updo. So your hearing aids, would show [00:35:00] if you had your hair in this hairstyle. And I remember my mom and I getting in an argument about whether or not I was going to be wearing my hearing aids to prom. I won that argument and I did not wear my hearing aids to prom. And I know that I did not have the greatest time because I couldn't hear but my hair looked really nice. I was just really self-conscious [00:35:42] phase of my life, where I was not comfortable in my own skin with wearing hearing aids and that transferred all the way through high school as an educational audiologist and [00:36:00] professional. Now I'm really shameful and embarrassed to say this, but I, it took me a long time to get to acceptance of who I was with a hearing loss.
[00:36:17] So let's fast forward a few more years. Let's fast forward a couple more years to college. I had no idea what I wanted to go into. When I first applied to college, I knew that I liked people. I knew I wanted to be in a helping profession. So it was actually my clinical audiologist at the time who asked me [00:36:45] Hey, what are you thinking about going into when I was going for just a yearly checkup and I had answered, I wasn't really sure, but I had been accepted to bowling green state [00:37:00] university in Ohio, and I was going in undecided in health professions. And so she went on to say, have you ever thought about audiology as a profession?
[00:37:13] And honestly that thought had never really crossed my mind, but my thoughts started turning just a little bit at that appointment. So to make a long story short, this was a major pivot point in my life and led me into the field of audiology. So in future podcast, I am excited to be able to thread in some of these tidbits that I shared with you today, and my personal experiences into the interviews with professionals and others who have a personal journey with audiology, with hearing challenges with this walks, these types of walks of life.
[00:38:06] So I'm going to just wrap up now. And I am going to circle back over to Rick Warren's quote from the purpose driven life. That character is both developed and revealed by test and all of life is a test. So I know I have had a lot of tests in my life to get to the place where I am and to have found acceptance. To be able to live well with my hearing loss.
[00:38:35] I still today. And as you will see in future podcasts, I go through ups and downs. So if I face new situations, new challenges, this is why I am so excited to bring to you empower ear audiology as a podcast. So as a passionate audiologist with a personal journey, I  cannot wait to share more with all of you and have conversations with experts who are personally and professionally invested in the world of hearing and hearing loss and hearing challenges. So again, subscribe today and I can't wait to bring more podcasts to each and every one of you. If you have a comment or a suggestion or want to hear about something, please reach out to me.
[00:39:33] And I can't wait to hear what your feedback is. Thank you. This has been a production of the 3C digital media network. 
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